Many portable devices rely on a battery or another limited power source for power. In order to conserve power during operation of such a device, the device may use electrical circuitry components that consume a limited amount of power. Also, many devices implement a sleep mode to temporarily turn off the entire device or portions of the device which consume a substantial amount of power. When the device is in the sleep mode, the device consumes relatively little power. In contrast, when the device is in the awake mode, the device consumes more power and, hence, the battery capacity is depleted more quickly.
Turning on and off certain components of a remote device can be complicated when the remote device relies on a highly accurate clock signal for communications with a host, because a high power oscillator is typically required to generate the clock signal with sufficient accuracy. If the high power oscillator is allowed to remain awake in between communications, then the remote device continues to consume a substantial amount of power. However, turning off the high power oscillator can result in calibration problems because the high accuracy clock signal will not be calibrated with the clock signal of the host device when the high power oscillator is turned back on. Thus, the high accuracy clock signal is not synchronized with the clock signal of the host device with which the remote device is intended to communicate. This problem is evident in systems which implement wireless communications using standard Bluetooth® communication protocols. Consequently, it can be difficult to establish a balance between power conservation and communication synchronization.